Masculinity

I balk defining anything or anyone as “masculine” or “feminine.” To me, they are useless words whose definitions only play into the “gender binary” (which is false) and perpetual traditional gender roles, expression, and stereotypes that set us on the path toward “toxic masculinity” in the first place.

I think masculinity and femininity are things each person has to define for themselves. For instance: I feel very feminine dressing up and wearing makeup. I like feeling protected and taken care of. I am nurturing and like being the one who takes care of my husband and our house. I find my husband very masculine because he’s the protector and main provider in our family. He is chivalrous; he opens doors for me, pulls out my chair, and carries the heavy things. He works in a “masculine” job and I kinda love seeing him in uniform. I also think his beard makes him more masculine. And I don’t see any of this as bad or toxic or wrong. I think it becomes toxic when you expect EVERYONE to live by these things or if you shame others for not living by these things. It’s individual. Some will agree and live similarly, some will disagree, some will be somewhere in the middle. And all of it’s ok.

Nothing defines a man. Gender is a spectrum. So far my oldest is your stereotypical macho guy. He is obsessed with football, only reads nonfiction stuff about sports or animals, loves hunting, fishing, being in the woods, wrestling, refuses to take part in anything he deems feminine. You get the picture. The middle doesn’t fit into stereotypical gender molds. He loves painting his nails, favorite color is purple, he loves Trolls, but he’s my roughest child, loves fishing but won’t touch the bait or fish, etc. The youngest is only 3.5 so🤷‍♀️ I don’t raise them with boy stuff or girl stuff, and I try really hard to mitigate the toxic masculinity that’s already creeping in. Ex. Because of his friends, my oldest now thinks that it’s weak to talk about your feelings or to cry☹️ We’re working on that.

I don't care for defining people by their gender. I don't do stereotypes and I don't play into gender roles. People have their own identities, personalities, hobbies, and things they like outside of their gender or genitalia.

Toxic masculinity is a direct result of over compensation to conform to outdated arbitrary male gender roles and ideals... by the same token I believe there can be toxic femininity such as gossiping, over emphasis on physical attributes at the risk of intellectual ones .... as human beings , we are dimensional not dichotomous .

Idk about qualifying masculinity, but I did come to a conclusion recently of the similarities I toxic men in general and how just being a Male is a superiority complex for these individuals.

Gender doesn’t really make sense to me. Everyone is different and should be different, there shouldn’t be two categories that people’s likes/ attributes/ careers fall into. Being a man just means you identify as a man.

I just feel like a lot of men get super defensive whenever anyone mentions 'toxic masculinity' and say that people are trying to keep them from 'being a man.' I definitely think of men in a certain way, but I think the media has distorted things a lot. For example...strength (obviously not exclusive to men, but important to most of them) should be used to protect and not to bully.

For me, it’s just what I have learned to be masculinity. Like certain clothes, styles, ways of walking, ways of talking, behavior, and more. What defines a man is something different to me. It actually has nothing to do with masculinity. It simply is when someone identifies as a man. There’s not much more to it than that. I consider myself more masculine than feminine a lot of the time. But I’m not a man. I am a girl.

I am a man. This is a good question too. I’d be interested to see more responses on the matter. I personally believe there are differences, in line with proven biology and psychological studies and I don’t think there is anything bad about being a man. I do however have a problem with this “toxic masculinity” thing going around because who gets to determine a “toxically masculine man”? Are you really going to point to a man and say you are toxically masculine? Would any man even admit to being toxically masculine? It is like the far-right and far-leftists, I can hand on heart say I have never met one because no one believes themselves to be extremely left or right. And rightly so, people are very complicated with opinions fluctuating. Its always other people telling me who is what based on nothing but an opinion.